Some Pretty Terrific Words

Hi Everyone,

First off, a big apology for last week’s lack of a blog. I’m sure you were waiting for it with baited breath and were grossly disappointed. I had work up to my eyeballs, and I could barely find time to breathe. I almost asked someone else to take over my breathing (true story).

Today’s blog is about vocabulary building. I mentioned early on that it’s always good practice to read books that challenge your vocabulary. You should be learning new words on a regular basis and adding them to your vocabulary bank (rich in words – why not?).

So here are three today. Mull them over, chew on them over the course of the week, and maybe spit them out and regurgitate them (ewww.) Ok, just use them.

Immutable

This word is probably related to mutate and mutation, with which you are more familiar, but when you look them up, one has a Latin origin, and the other Old English. Never mind. It all came from PIE. We all spoke PIE once upon a time. And now? Now we eat pie.

Tack an “im” at the beginning, and you know you can’t do it, i.e. cannot mutate. Just like possible and impossible, probable and improbable, p and imp. Ok, not that last one.

Immutable, simply put, means cannot or does not change over time. What can be immutable? Certain facts, I suppose. Great truths. Children. No. They mutate by the minute.

Let’s try it out in a sentence:

The immutable law of gravity keeps us all in our place (literally speaking).

Another sentence:

Not much in our day-to-day lives is immutable, and that’s a fact.

Scratch your head and see if you can come up with your own sentence. Do write in the comments and share! What do you consider to be immutable?

Next:

Jingoism

This sounds like a fun word, but it’s actually deadly serious. It has to do with nationalism in an aggressive and proactive shove-it-down-your-throat way. It’s a bully mentality to foreign policy. Are you trying to wrap your head around this? Me too. It’s when you’re proud of your country but too proud.

Shall we try a few sentences?

Jingoism tends to rear its head in wartime.

A few fanatical people can take a sane patriotism to the dangerous level of jingoism.

You want to try a sentence? Post it in the comments! Would be interested to see what you can come up with.

Terrific

Terrific? Terrific? But we all know this word! A teacher’s favourite sticker: Terrific!

It’s great, it’s terrific!

But…. Drum roll please.

I want to introduce you to another use for it.

Ever thought the words “terrific” and “terror” could be related? Distant cousins maybe? On second thought, a great-great grandmother. “Terrific” meaning "inspires terror" is now considered archaic. How sad. Use it! Use it now and make it trendy! It could be the next big thing on the social media site of your choice! Why not? Worse things have trended, I’m sure.

Have you ever heard of a terrific thunderstorm?

It could be mean terrific as in “tremendous, huge, massive” or “dreadful, terrible”. You decide. If you’re scared by a thunderstorm, then it’s a terrific thunderstorm. If it’s just a huge, loud thunderstorm, hey, you know what? It’s still terrific! I love it.

Some sentences:

I can’t hear you over the phone! There’s a terrific thunderstorm going on! What did you say?

The war was marked by terrific battles throughout.

The lion gave a terrific roar, and I promptly fainted.

Let me know what’s terrific in your life this week. No, not the good terrific. The other one.

Ciao bambinos and bambinas. And lovers of bamboo furniture.

PerfectlyWriteKids bids you a good week. Go out there and make better sentences. Terrific ones. Not ones filled with jingoist sentiments. And in all likelihood, your sentences won’t be immutable. But your examples might be.